schooner at the main; while the original fore-and-aft rig was sometimes used on schooners of considerable tonnage for those days.
The Baltimore clippers of that period, usually rigged as topsail schooners, enjoyed a well-earned reputation for speed and weatherly qualities. And the enormous profits resulting from the slave-trade, became an incentive to improvements in model and rig. Many of these schooners sailed under the flags of Spain and Portugal, but the war of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain furnished in privateering an irresistible stimulant to the shipowners, shipwrights, and seamen of the seaports along the Atlantic coast. It was during this war that the Baltimore clippers achieved a world-wide reputation. Their models and rig were adopted at home; and after the war they became the standard of excellence in the Royal Navy and in the Yacht Club of England. Allusions to their long, low, black hulls and slender, raking masts have embellished and enlivened many a song and story.
The portraits of three of these famous vessels are here given: the David Porter showing the fore-and-aft rig; and the topsail schooner Dolphin,—both privateers,—and an unknown brigantine, probably a slaver or a privateer, to judge from the sail she has set to keep out of range of the guns of the frigate chasing her.
The lines of a Virginia privateer of 1812-1815 are here given, and may be taken as a type of the Baltimore clipper of that period, showing a round, easy bow and midship section, with a long, clean
